Thug Life Aesthetics

Right, so don't take this as a replacement for the long-promised, possibly-never-happening post in which I deliver my two cents on hip-hop, specifically the Tupac-Biggie schism (I'm starting to realize that I don't really know that much about hip-hop, and until I can educate myself suitably, I'm not about to spout off in an informed way on the internet). But I'm still gonna touch on Pac for a quick second here: I was just sitting at my desk, listening to "Me Against the World" and thinking about why I enjoy Tupac as a rapper. For me, it's the fact that his rhymes form a solid narrative with relative effortlessness that really does it(yeah yeah yeah, over-intellectualizing popular art, but this gets interesting). Sure, he can be clever when he wants, but I rather appreciate the restraint he uses. It makes his track almost subtle, if not in theme. Contrast this with some MF Doom, which I've been listening to at length after the discovery of Madvillain; there's a thing on the internet linking famous rappers with famous authors, and the Doom analogue was Pynchon, which is about right. Absurd rhymes, notable for their lyric quality and bizarre humor/imagery, reveling in the construction of couplets. That ain't Tupac, he's got a story to tell. And (another reason why I love him) Tupac's story is that of humanity. He does rap about gang life and the dangers of being a young black man in the late 80's/early 90's, something that I personally don't happen to know intimately about, but in his rhymes Tupac opens and universalizes the experience via the emotive powers of music. I couldn't remember the entire rhyme off the top of my head, but in "Me Against the World," when he's talking about how thugs get lonely too, that really clicks viscerally within me. Yeah, college students don't feel like they're embattled with the universal powers in the same way thugs on the streets of LA do, but Tupac doesn't alienate. He opens these feeling up to empathy, and by doing so creates deep emotional resonance in his listeners. And then I realized, this is exactly why "hard" songs are worth listening too-- Tom Waits, for example. Tom Waits may not fall right next to Tupac on the realism spectrum, but they both tackle really deep emotions. Just look at all those train songs. Tom is singing about people who have really hit rock bottom there, and instead of trying to gloss over or solve these problems, he's saying hey, let's give grief its proper time. By listening to one of his down-and-out ballads, we're taking some time to sit down and really feel for all the folks out there waiting for that train to bring them home, the people who've really messed up and are just starting to try and bring it back up. And, in spending two to five minutes in peaceful auditory meditation on this theme, we're really getting in touch with humanity in the collective sense. It's way too easy to wall off individual experiences-- oh, Biggie's angry because he's had a rough life and is dealing with heavy mental/emotional issues-- in the way we consume art. What guys like Tom Waits and Tupac do is put us, for a brief moment, in the mental shoes of that lonely thug in South Central, or that semi-mythical traveling salesman cum boozehound. Life is a hard thing to bear, and we tend to make it through with a whole lot of help from our social herd. Tom and Pac just make that herd a bit bigger from time to time. Now, how's that for universalizing gloomy themes in gangsta rap?

Everyone feels a little "vs. the World" at some point

And that is where I think "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" finds its strength-- dealing with exes, one's own feelings, and all that other Lifetime Movie Network stuff in the real world feels like a struggle, so why not turn it into the ultimate nerd fantasy of arcade-game combat with super-powered exes? That's charm right there guys, and that's what keeps the movie afloat. Edgar Wright did his best with someone else's story and MIchael Cera's inertial screen presence (meaning that he always plays Michael Ceera), and he came away with a pretty good movie. It's certainly visually stimulating, with lots of comic book word-effects to accompany Scott's actions and a bright color palate, and there are some really fun actors at work (the gay roomie, the drummer girl and Young Neil were all quite appealing to me), but at the same time the whole story kind of boils down to this metaphor of combat as a form of dealing with things and typical awkward/quirky humor. But I only say these things because I have a great deal of respect for everyone involved and think that things could have gone a whole lot better: Edgar Wright, for example, probably would have done some cutting homage stuff with a kind of dark social twist, were he not beholden to someone else's story; Michael Cera was probably instructed by higher-ups to keep the awkward stuff, even though I hear that the character in the comics is supposed to be a super-cool dude instead of lovably awkward; and I have yet to read the comics, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they're even more wildness and less traditional talk.

But hey, criticism isn't fun unless it's panning something really bad, and this movie wasn't really bad. If you lose yourself in the alternate universe, it's actually quite fun: Michael Cera apparently knows all sorts of action moves, Toronto is a place where it's kind of concrete-y and dark a whole lot but also has a thriving video game reality thingy, and there's even a question of alternate realities that pops up near the end, if you pay attention (I actually missed the last two minutes, for full disclosure's sake, so something awesome may have happened, but I had reached the point where I could see what was going to go down and had pressing business to take care of). But you know what? I'm going to contradict my earlier statements right now. If a movie could have been greater, everyone involved deserves dudes like me posting semi-pro reviews telling them what went wrong and how. So here's the deal: fill out character backstories. I wanted to know more about Scott and the drummer girl from his band, and really wanted to hang out with those characters. More of the gay roommate: he was really funny and a kind of mentor-type dude. If you're gonna meld video game reality and awkward teen emotion movies, go all the way with the video game stuff and then we'll forgive the whining: yeah, that pretty much says it. Think about how much more entertaining Juno would have been if it was all in 2D and progressed by levels; that could have been "Scott Pilgrim." And Michael Cera: if you hope to work as an actor past the age of 25, you're gonna have to diversify your characters, champ. I loved you as George Michael, we all did. It's just that, unless it's for the Arrested Development movie, it's time to play other characters. The indie kids are dying, evolutionarily displaced by hipster scum. We are starting to live in days of cruel ironic detachment or bro-ish over-enthusiasm. You can lead us in the next step, Michael Cera, by breaking from the shy and cutely awkward schtick. Play a bastard with an icy-black heart, someone who kicks puppies and drives a BMW (BMW drivers are dicks). Play a remote and emotionally traumatized war vet, struggling to reconnect with his family (the AD movie? Twenty years after the events seen in the TV show? Make it happen). Play someone new, Michael Cera, and respect will come flowing in. I know that people will always be awkward, and that the indie kids in retrospect were infinitely preferable to these new-fangled hipsters (indie kids: charmingly optimistic and dreamy. Hipsters: dicks), and that innocence and wonder and joy will never die out. As long as there are people, there will be awkward relationships, shy boys and headstrong girls, and all the other staples our generation has come to accept from you. But let someone else lead the charge, Michael Cera. Become the spurned ninja assassin that Scott Pilgrim should have been. I'll be waiting for that moment. Until then, I'll keep watching your enjoyable teen movies. Just expect more of the same from me.

David Simon and the New Orleans Board of Tourism

Nah, this isn't an article or interview or head-to-head deathmatch, just another oddly worded title. And the urge to post today comes from a desire to turn this aimless energy into something productive and thoughtful, namely finally getting my thoughts about the first season of "Treme" down so I can move on while also burning off some creative steam. Cool, let's get right to it.

At one point, I had all kinds of insightful things to say about "Treme" that were going to tackle tough questions raised in interviews and other reviews, but they're all long forgotten. So maybe it'd be best to make it super-personal and address that title, which came from my own personal response to basically every episode of this show: "I'm moving to New Orleans. That's all there is to it, I'm [expletive removed, because I'm starting to try and keep it semi-professional] going." But unlike Jules and Amsterdam, it isn't the one thing that's dragging my daydreams towards the idea of a future in New Orleans, it's everything, even the post-massive natural disaster suffering. Okay, that sounds pretty bad, but bear with me: "Treme" is what, to my young and impressionable little brain, the real New Orleans is like, because what better way to see a city through its people dealing with the consequences of a hurricane? Exactly. And that's what I've been getting at: "Treme" is great because of its characters. Well, and some other things too, but the characters are basically the meat and bread of this show. See, unlike "The Wire," a show I'm legally bound to refer to here because we're talking about David Simon, "Treme" doesn't have a super plot-driven story. Now, bear in mind that I'm one of those guys who will tell you that "The Wire" is probably one of the greatest shows in the history of the medium of television (something I fully intend on doing in great length once I finish the 5th season, which is what I'm up to now), and who will stand up and argue that part of what makes that particular show excellent is the detailed cast of characters, their complex morality, their stories and personalities, and how all of that becomes a part of the story. But at the heart of it all, "The Wire" is about the results of the things these characters do; a lot happens in a season, and it's very much about the journey. But not much has happened over the course of this first season of "Treme," activity-wise. People move around, have interactions, do things like go down to Texas or end up in jail, but nobody stages drug sweeps or makes investigations or kills other people (and if they did, I sure as hell wouldn't ruin it here for you). Here's a good comparison: a lot of the first season of "Treme" surrounds people's preparations for Mardi Gras and the outcomes of the things that happen on that day. A lot of the first season of "The Wire" is about trying to bring down a drug ring in West Baltimore through all manner of wiretaps and police work. At the end of the day, "Treme" is about how the characters interact with each other and grow, while "The Wire" is about information and actions, and how this changes other information and other actions.

Glad I've pontificated at extreme length. For those of you not yet alienated, let's move on. The characters are the major draw for "Treme." Almost everyone is written and acted with a warmth and humanity that is instantly winning (I will probably never be able to see Steve Zahn in anything without thinking of Davis, for example). There is humor, there is life, and there is anger; this is a show of emotions, and how they've been stirred by the catastrophe. And what makes everything so winning is that, in spite of some minor theatricality inherent in television, these seem like truly real people, and that in turn makes their lives what real life in New Orleans is like, and because everyone, through their highs and lows, trials and triumphs, etcetera etcetera is so real and full of life, it makes the prospect of living in New Orleans highly appealing, the vivacity of it all. Of course, that may have something to do with the fantastic second line scenes, and the music, and the food, and all that stuff (in our cast of characters we do have a Mardi Gras Indian Chief, a chef and a good number of musicians, so there's a bit of bias). Speaking as a man who's never been down to New Orleans, it seems rather idyllic, even in the throes of recovery. Thus our title: David Simon, for me, has worked as the best advertiser the city could ever dream of.

But I'm drifting way off target. I pretty much said it all in the comparison paragraph: "Treme" is one of the warmest and most optimistically human ("The Wire" can be kind of tough-realty bleak, and I hear similar things about "Generation Kill") David Simon productions around, quite accessible and a true pleasure to watch. It does polemicize about the infuriating ignorance the rest of the nation chose to send down Louisiana way, and there are some truly downer moments, but it's all part of the cliched rich pageant of life. And all the little things are just right- jokes, good musical interludes (that actually progress the story!), cool images, and wonderful, wonderful relationships that build and mature in odd and pleasing ways. I think episode eight was probably the single most joyous piece of television that I can remember watching, ever. Bottom line: way to go David Simon, you have succeeded in making a show about life in a special place at a critical time that doesn't feel exploitative or fake in any way. "The Wire" still earns my vote for the best ever television show, but it's like comparing "The Big Lebowski" and "Chinatown." One is a masterpiece of American cinema that tells a tough story, an the other is a masterpiece of wonder and joy. This has become a little overwrought in its praises, so I'll end things for real now.

Graffiti Is Harder Than It Looks

It's been quite a while now since I saw the Banksy movie ("Exit Through The Gift Shop" if we want to use correct titles today), so here's hoping I can pull some coherent thoughts together on a movie that's left most every theater by this point. Problem is, I don't quite know where to begin: it was an immensely pleasing documentary, but a documentary in the Banksy style where you aren't even sure what's right and what's wrong. If we assume that the mysterious hooded and voice-altered figure really is Banksy and that all the other characters really are who they're supposed to be (although it is tempting to believe other things, but my mid-film hand analysis proved Banksy and Mr. Brainwash, your as-of-yet-unintroduced title character, to be separate people, and besides, does it make any difference whether these people are who they say they are?), then the movie reads as the story of street art, as told from the perspective of Thierry, a French dude living in Los Angeles. Thierry gets involved in the scene back in France through a street artist cousin who later introduces him to other prominent artists in Europe and America, eventually leading to Banksy himself. The conceit that leads to the movie, though, is that Thierry is an obsessive videographer, meaning that while running around at night with these dudes putting up graffiti he was also filming (awkward sentence construction). This leads to an astounding wealth of raw footage chronicling the birth of a scene, footage that Banksy ends up turning into a movie when Thierry proves himself unfit to direct by creating an unwatchable and seizure-inducing attempt at film. As Banksy takes control, he tells Thierry to go try his hand at being an artist; thus Mr. Brainwash was born.

This is where things switch tone. Up until this point, Thierry was our anchor, the man who was figuring out this complicated world of street art with us, a friend. But the film always had a kind of distant attitude towards him, and right about when he introduces his version of the movie things get a bit nasty. After all, everything previous had been pretty much objective, what with Thierry figuring out the world of street art, and talking head bits with Banksy and other dudes like Shepard Fairey served to back up everything that he was observing. But once Thierry started producing art, subjective stuff, it was time for the big voices of the street art world to speak up, and their voices are less than favorable. I won't really get into the specifics, as that would spoil the meat of the movie for you guys, but the bottom line is that Thierry/Mr. Brain Wash, his street art persona, are less than successful. In fact, I'd go so far to say that Mr. BW is basically a reflection of most things that are wrong with the creative world today: his work is derivative, he hires others to produce it, he lacks a real reason to create street art beyond the desire to emulate and achieve success, and his only strong skill seems to be self-marketing, which leads to a great series of interviews with the Los Angeles public talking about how they think Mr. BW is awesome, even though he clearly is not and they clearly have no idea what he's all about. Hype! It's so cool.

Banksy comes out with a line around this point in the film, something like, "I used to tell everyone they should make art, but then I met Thierry. I don't tell that to everyone anymore." And I guess that'd be one of the major themes of this movie, a cautionary tale about how to go about creating art. On the one hand, sounds like the man is saying that Real Art is for the pros, so piss off. But in fact, when you look at that statement with the rest of the first half of the movie, talking about the rise of the movement and all that, it seems to be more of a "be real with your art" message. Mr. BW's problem isn't the impulse to create art, it's his intentions and motivations. His work is empty, shallow, commercial. Basically everyone else's art has a bit of spiritual flair, be it anti-authoritarian mischief, cutting social commentary, or just something cool displayed ephemerally in the public world. I think what the ambassador meant to say was that everyone should still create art, but they should do it on their own terms and for themselves. If you hone your craft and develop a weltanschauung (just wanted to use the word), then possibly fame and gallery shows will follow, but by that point it won't really matter, 'cause the art will be something that you do for yourself and for it's own artistic sake, and will thusly remain untainted. I suppose there's some more in there about the nature of public consumption of art (we like it pre-hyped and marketable, presented in a big gallery party so we can be seen enjoying it), and the bits about the origins of the scene are almost straight documentary, but that's about all I've got for direct themes.

Indirectly, there's some weirdness about the ethics of what Banksy did. Because let's face it, he took Thierry's footage and then made a movie about what a tool Thierry is, and might possibly be prospering. But this falls back into the category of Weird Things That One Could Think About Too Much, like the accuracy of any of the history of the movement stuff, whether it's really Banksy, what he's getting at by producing a movie like this (teasing us, defying the public to unmask him?), and even whether Thierry is just a character. The mind reels though, so it's safe to leave it as possibly troublesome but only mildly uncomfortable while watching Banksy rip on our filmmaker. Thing is, that ripping is really funny; the whole movie is really funny. And the editing, music, and all those other stylistic things are also slick and super-cool, as befitting a hip street artist's movie. It's a real pleasure to watch, and despite Banksy's admonitions inspiring. Perhaps the best way to breed the next generation of graffiti artists is to show them how it isn't done.

Next on my writing agenda: thoughts on the end of "Treme," and possibly a movie to come in the next week. I really just end with these to remind myself of what I ought to be doing.

"Now This Is What The Music Industry Is All About!"

Just a quick review of "Get Him To The Greek," while it's all fresh in my contemplative little head: in the Apatow-associated-but-not-produced pantheon, better than "I Love You Man," but not quite "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." Definitely worth an evening's attention and diversion though. That was the super-short wrap-up I composed in my head earlier today; now here's my reasoning. "Greek" may tread in the same character footsteps as "Sarah Marshall," but I found "Greek" to be somehow less personable and relatable. Maybe it was the fact that the people's problems seem somehow more abstract/contrived: Jonah Hill, we can immediately tell, has relationship issues lurking just below the surface, but at the same time he's nearly completely blameless; Russell Brand, returning as Aldous Snow, has deeply ingrained personal problems that are messing up his life. These problems will somehow be solved, as in all Apatow-affiliated productions, with some deep soul-searching scenes and awkward humor, and we know this when we buy the ticket in the first place. Yet there was a complexity to "Sarah Marshall," the closest relation, that I could really dig on. Jason Segel must have really had his heart destroyed at some point, because it shows in his writing, but being a funny dude he can convey the situation of wanting to be with/semi-stalk the woman who dumped you, then finding someone else who's cool, but not being entirely sure of what anyone wants, least of all yourself, and then the first girl ends up wanting to get back together, and you don't want to hurt anyone, and BOOM! You've used too many commas in a sentence describing the total mess that is the essence of the "Sarah Marshall" relationship diagram. Of course, Jason then went and abstracted the whole thing to a degree for humor, and then glamorized everything by making Sarah Marshall a Kristen Bell-played TV superstar who runs off to Hawai'i, but that heart of confusion is still there, and that's what makes "Sarah Marshall" realer for me. I just preferred Aldous as a two-dimensional sex machine, an ego with a libido, who could spout off and be funny. Sure, even Rockstars have feelings, but the movie simplifies things a bit to accommodate the dual focus of Jonah and Russell (and sorry for switching between actor names and character names so freely this evening), leaving us only with empathy. Sure, they're likable enough dudes, but there's not the same question of "should Peter get back together with Sarah or stay with cool new girl whose name escapes me right now?" Maybe it's because "Sarah Marshall" has become what Tarantino would call a hang-out movie, where I watch it to chill with the characters. I'm invested in Peter's life for those two-ish hours, and get caught up in his psyche. With "Greek," I kind of just pitied Aldous and Jonah Hill's character for having to deal with him.

Anyways, that's my long-winded explanation for why I like "Sarah Marshall," cleverly disguised as comparative review. For all that, though, "Greek" was still pretty good, because even if I didn't click with is as emotionally as a certain other movie we've discussed at length today, it had the benefit of more Aldous Snow and an excellent Sean Combs as Sergio, music producer and batshit insane dude. Seriously, without Diddy to balance everything out, I would have written things off as Sarah Marshall-sploitation. But Diddy we have, so Diddy we shall enjoy. Every scene with him is wonderful, and the other actors do a fine job in their own rights. Some inspired sequences, more Infant Sorrow songs (always a plus), and a good-time vibe, what's not to like in an evening's entertainment?

Up next: a hopefully thoughtful review of the Banksy movie.

On the Perils of Self-Induced Overhyping

Well, I seem to have done too much heavy duty thinking and pondering this evening, as I've reached one of those states of extreme philosophical introspection. Let's see what it does for a complex movie review, that of "Winter's Bone." I think I closed my last review mentioning that I was really excited for this movie; that's a bit of an understatement. Ever since I read about it in the Cannes reviews, I've been getting little-kid-before-Christmas excited for this movie. I tried to sell it to all my friends, I raved about it to my family, I criticized the trailer for being overly sensational without having ever seen the movie, and in general I developed a few too many expectations. So it was too late for me when I tried to take a more reasonable stance the evening of the movie, as I had already overhyped "Winter's Bone" to a point where I wasn't sure exactly how I'd feel about it. And I'm still not sure how I feel, in spite of certainty that it was a good movie.

I suppose it didn't help that I missed the first ten minutes, which led to a nagging feeling of having missed a good chunk of initial pacing. But my knowledge of the plot helped see me through the rest of the movie: Ree, a girl of about seventeen, looks after her two younger siblings in the chilly meth-cooking district of the Ozarks while her mother languishes with some kind of mental illness. Trouble (always trouble!) shows up in the form of a sheriff (or someone, this is the part I missed), informing Ree that her long-gone father was arrested and put their property up for bail. Long-gone meth-cooking fathers being what they are, Ree places little faith in the idea of him showing up for his court date, so she sets off through the neighborhood to try and find word of her daddy, so she can force him into showing up, thereby saving the house and her ability to care for the family. Another critic referred to her journey as a kind of Odyssey, and that's really stuck with me, so I'm pirating it right now: Ree's quest and the slightly creepy half-relative folks she has to deal with are... Odyssey-like? I really wanted to say Odysseus, but that hardly sounds right.

Cutting past that rambling, the story now takes off in the slow and subtle way of atmospheric mysterious journeys. Things unfold steadily, side-characters come and go regularly with their various agendas, and gradually everything takes the form of a world where life is a struggle and folks get by as best they can, which means keeping secrets and family ties equally strong. Danger abounds, of course, but Ree acquits herself admirably: she is played with a kind of matter-of-fact courage by Jennifer Lawrence, doing a fine job. But she does have a little help along the way, most notably from her Uncle Teardrop, played by John Hawkes. Teardrop was one of the better characters, in my humble opinion, an enigmatic man who seems to have mastered this cruel Ozark world through a combination of toughness and slight insanity. I'm starting to find it hard to describe things to y'all without possibly ruining anything, so let's cut the professionalism and get down to subjectivity. I thought this was a good movie; it moved at the slower pace that I like, especially when there are as many details and relationships floating around as there are here. Ultimately, I thought it all got down to be about the journey instead of the exact details of Ree's father (surprise!). It all boiled down to her ability to ultimately deal with the pressures of raising her siblings entirely alone and in the face of extreme adversity, and that took iron courage, something that you don't see relayed this convincingly much at all, especially not these days. And then there was the counterpart of Teardrop, who had already survived to the point of becoming entirely enmeshed in the adversity, something that I thought was especially moving in the closing scenes. Ree has to learn to rise above it all and deal, and Teardrop rose to the point where he had to come crashing back down.

But those are just my thoughts. What I really came here to try and talk about today is the idea of self overhyping, which is really what I think happened here with "Winter's Bone." Part of it is that I really wanted this movie to floor me, yet I walked out contemplative. Another part is that I found myself almost forcing joy and engagement to the point where I'm still not sure whether or not this was the movie or the idea of what I thought the movie was going to be. And this is tricky, especially for your run-of-the-mill aspiring movie critic. I want the truthful objectivity I had for "Micmacs," a movie I had heard was good from someone I trust. When you walk in with no expectations, you have a blank slate to chart your opinions on. But what of my marred slate for "Winter's Bone?" Truth is, I probably won't be able to figure it out until I end up re-watching it in a year or so, and hopefully then I won't be watching with an eye to please myself again. What I think we must do in this case is chalk the experience up with an asterisk: it was good, but a disappointment for strange internal reasons that have nothing to do with the film. The peril of self-induced overhyping is the excitement of anticipation, which contrasts sharply with the contemplative pleasure of a movie like "Winter's Bone."

I have rambled but good at this point, so I'm going to cut off abruptly and leave that last sentence as my last sentence. Movie review backlog has already developed, so expect one of "Exit Through the Gift Shop" as soon as I can motivate to do a decent job.

Micmacs is probably French for Joy

Actually it's supposed to translate to "shenanigans" or "shady dealings" or something loose and slangy like that (say other reviews/synopses; any French-speakers in the audience today?), but I kind of like my interpretation better. After all, how often can you walk into a movie theater and then leave absolutely sure that your eleven bucks went to the pursuit of pure joy and happiness? 'Cause that's kind of what seeing "Micmacs" was like for me. Here's the lowdown: director of "Amelie" has done himself an action movie, but a light/quirky/"Amelie"-esque action movie (his name is Jean-Pierre Jeunet for the curious). Danny Boon, the French comic actor, stars as a kind of aimless young dude who lost his father to a land mine explosion, and then suffers an accidental brain injury when a bullet from a drive-by ricochets and lodges itself in his skull, leaving him susceptible to sudden instant death. All of this goes down within minutes. After coming out of the injury-coma, our young dude, whose name is Bazil, finds himself without a home or possessions or really much of anything. His post-discovering-my-life-as-I-knew-it-is-gone walk of sadness leads him do a quirky old dude who lives in a junkyard and presides over a big and happy family of other oddballs, all of whom have special abilities (one makes mechanical contraptions, another is a contortionist). For a few minutes they live happily in their junkyard house, salvaging stuff and being pleasantly odd, until Bazil stumbles upon the offices of the corporations that made both the land mine AND the bullet in his skull, conveniently across the street from each other. Righteous anger brewing, Bazil kind of blindly strikes out to do something about the grave psycho-emotional injuries he's suffered from these corporations, each headed by a Bad Dude, and before you know it he's planning, with a little help from his friends, how to best set these two corporations/Bad Dudes against each other, to show them a lesson.

All of that isn't just me being weird with my storytelling or even taking creative editing liberties. All of that exposition really does happen in the first twenty-odd minutes, and at roughly that pace. Events slide smoothly into each other; long sequences of Bazil raging at his losses in a pouring rain as dramatic music plays (possibly over a hazy montage of remembrances of his life pre-bullet and land mine) are blissfully absent. We get a shot of Bazil, comprehending that THESE are the very corporations responsible for his discontent, and then boom! He's wandering the halls, looking for trouble. This energy, this pulse of life is what makes and sustains the film. It's a bit of a conceit, but the movie has this magical aura about it from the very first minute. Chalk it up to the score and art direction and all that stuff; this is magical realism in the Franco-"Amelie" style. And the beauty is that, because we can see that it's a fanciful story, we buy into it willingly and immediately. It creates the same kind of joy that I felt as a kid watching old Chaplin or Keaton movies-- yeah, dudes in real life don't actually do stuff like turn with the board on their shoulder and hit the other two dudes in the face, but it could happen, and perhaps the world would be a more wonderful place if it did, so of course I'll laugh and enjoy it. The silent movie comparison is probably the most apt, as the jokes in addition to the atmosphere of enthrallment with film as a medium share a whole lot with a less cynical era of moviemaking.

I'm waxing, but deservedly so. This movie is awesome, a delight in basically every way, and comes highly recommended. For our moment of universality and semi-academic thought, let's stop and think for a moment as to why on earth there aren't more action movies that are this fun and pleasing. It probably has something to do with this feeling I've been trying to describe through all of this rambling, the fact that this is whimsy of the inner-child-pleasing variety; none of your self-conscious adolescent whimsey, tinged with feelings of unrequited love (the worst kind, yet somehow quite pervasive) and insecurity, and none of your slightly cynical hipster-and-older whimsey, which comes off as slightly creepy. Another reviewer likened "Micmacs" to a Rube Goldberg machine, which is right on the money. The sum of the parts comes together completely to do something that wasn't precisely necessary, but with such flair and good nature that it instantly becomes necessary. Sure, parts of the machine are just there for show, and it could all have been a whole lot simpler, but it is what it is, and we love it. Contrast this with the machinery of your conventional summer action movie: big stars, enhanced explosions, otherworldly locations, all put together with the cold efficiency of economics. The sum of the parts is designed to appeal to as many moviegoers as possible in some very complex way, but the complexity really only relates to the equations involved, as the story is usually creatively and emotionally shallow. Let's not even get into the other realm of action movies, where things seem to continue to get grittier and darker as time goes on. That machinery is definitely militaristic, in the mean way of weapons favored by warlords in dangerous parts of the globe. I think the metaphor is pretty much played out by this point, but let's spell it out anyways: action movies, you don't need explosions and sex and violence and one-liners to be fun. In fact, I think that if you put some of that stuff aside for a while and instead chose to focus on the other things that make a movie fun, then we might get something spectacular on a regular basis. So go ahead, just try it out for a bit. Maybe you'll realize that being cool isn't about slick appearances, but instead relates to something that comes from within.

Some pretty wild sentence construction going on there, but it's okay, I'm not picky. I also saw "Babies" a while ago, but don't have much to say about it that you can't already intuit from the trailer. It's entertaining and cute. It features a lot of babies. It probably would make an awkward date movie. The end. Now, onwards to seeing a movie that has had me all worked up for a while now, "Winter's Bone."

Mother, Among Other Things

I've been pretty negligent with you guys lately, what with the usual distractions and all, so sorry 'bout that. But not really, because there's nothing to be sorry for, except the fact that I've forgotten a lot about what I wanted to say about today's (well, late March/early April's) movie. I was going to skip this one, but in between getting excited for this summer and free time to enjoy movies again and reading coverage of Cannes, I felt the urge to write. The only challenge is that I don't really have anything to say, so my plan for now is to kind of babble for a while until I make some kind of conclusion. Does that sound like a plan? I've had a lot of fleeting ideas lately, but every time I come to post they all fade away. So this'll be my way of trying to lure them back. Cool?

And so, predictably, it's been at least a week since I wrote even that paragraph. Excellent. Revising my ideas a tad, I think that today (and probably for the next few posts until I tire of this tactic) I'll focus less on the actual thing I'm talking about and instead seek to get at a big idea, which today will be Magic in Film. Call it a holdover from a semester spent doing some culture theory and intense literary analysis. So, how does this all relate back to "Mother?" I think that the director, Joon-ho Bong, is one of the most masterful filmmakers of our current time (right now) and capable of creating movies that go way beyond the pretty images/predictable story thing that gets pumped out so frequently these days, which may actually be making audiences devolve and is certainly wasting their time. But that's bile and anger for another day. "The Host," the other movie I saw by Bong, was a really good take on the bigass monster destroys cities genre, with a bunch of nasty messages about the medical profession snuck into the giant tadpole destruction. It was scary and interesting, but it also had cinematic life. There was an atmosphere that went with "The Host" that I can still sort of pull up mentally, having not seen it since theaters, which is (I think) one of the hallmarks of a successful movie: it creates its own world, with its own sights and sounds and presumed-but-inaccessible smells, that you can successfully lose yourself in and that sticks with you for years. Good books (and video games too, you could argue) do this as well: a masterful narrative needs a world to live in, so it creates its own.

All of that is kind of a longwinded approach to the point that "Mother" also has its own world-vibe going on, and it's this Bong-distinctive world-vibe of beautiful images and a slightly haunting story populated by a variety of interesting people. I suppose I could be a bit more insightful if I was Korean, but as an outsider I can only try to identify based on pure human empathy with our characters, a mother and her slightly retarded son. The story is set in motion when the son is accused of murdering a local girl, but the mother is our driving force, a tenacious amateur detective essentially battling a world of people who don't really care. But I'd hardly call this a detective story; it may share many of the conventions (clues, indifferent police chiefs), but "Mother" is really more of a soul-wrenching drama about people struggling to fight the good fight and do what's right (to put it in a simple rhyme). The characters are deep, the story engaging in the fine tradition of quality mysteries, and by the end I was involved to the point where I became truly upset with some of the choices our characters made. But what really sets "Mother" into an orbit of great film is Bong's masterful directorial touch that merges awe-inspiringly beautiful shots to this engaging story. Images of people dancing in fields and rainy dark alleys that achieve this degree of visual poetry need to be experienced to be understood. So that'd be my verdict on "Mother," if you want it straight-out: see this movie. It's not for the faint of heart, but it's really good.

And that, tying it all together, is what Great Film should really do: take a potentially upsetting story and elevate it to one of those universal emotional truths that make the scary/sad stories worthwhile. Because, after all, movies are their own unique brand of storytelling. Instead of the traditional verbal art of yarn-spinning or the beauty of the written word found in books (not to mention all the unique nuances that the specific forms bring to and use to alter the basic fabric of the Story), film is meant to use images as well as words and sound and acting to tell the tale. This creates a very different experience, almost that of viewing another possible permutation of the real world for 90-odd minutes, but has an almost magical quality when successfully pulled off. This would be that quality of film magic, and I think it comes from the otherworldliness of watching a movie. They proceed at stately pace, seem somehow familiar, and yet exist only as a series of film stills and in the imagination. This creates a more visceral experience, but one that must be carefully constructed. So many terrible movies exist and are immediately written off as fake, dreck, unimaginative pieces of Hollywood self-indulgence. But when true mastery comes along, it builds a world slowly, subtly, using elements that we are instantly familiar with (fields, human beings, a little music) to draw us in. And then at some point a switch flips, and we're in the world of that movie, wondering not who the actor is but what the character will do. It's a beautiful feeling, and I think that's what we need more of today: "Casablanca" over "Prince of Persia." There was a time when it seems that more movies were magical in this way instead of strictly commercial, and I think that's what that Cannes coverage inspired in me. There are still people out there making great movies, movies that actually have some of this magic, and they should be treated as the cool gender-neutral-Dudes that they are. Let's see if we can't raise some appreciation for old-school movie awesomeness.

How's that for a welcome back to the blog?